No Alien army landing by 2036.

[Luscious Lucius]

Is my run broken?

This is my first time playing to this late and I know the aliens are supposed to land around this time. But literally nothing was happening. I was so distracted with making the Caliphate big because all that was coming up was the odd alien terrorise mission and more and more alien ships entering low earth orbit. Non of them were transports and I think I heard that was a bug a while ago, but I started this run last week.

[Marchand]

If the servants and the aliens in particular have been getting shot on a regular basis, things tend to go slower. When tech research really takes off has been a balance flashpoint with the developers for a while.

[debott]

Unless you reduced alien progression in your pre-game settings, I'd say it might be a bug. Hard to say, though.

I recommend playing on until 2040. If no transport happens by then, share a copy of your save with the devs, so they can have a look. (You might even want to share it right away. If it is indeed broken, the devs can fix your save file for you. They helped to save my run once, too.)

[noobermenschen]

Originally posted by Luscious Lucius:

Is my run broken?

This is my first time playing to this late and I know the aliens are supposed to land around this time. But literally nothing was happening. I was so distracted with making the Caliphate big because all that was coming up was the odd alien terrorise mission and more and more alien ships entering low earth orbit. Non of them were transports and I think I heard that was a bug a while ago, but I started this run last week.

I saw that happen with my last campaign (Initiative). As Marchand hinted, the Servants weren't doing very well, partially because the Resistance and Humanity First were picking on them, mostly because I traded those sweet sweet projects to the Servants so they put their storyline research firmly on the back burner.

By 2036 there were two assault carriers cowering in the Kuiper Belt. I had Adamantane armor and all the weapons I needed so just built my battleships and went loud. They finally got around to sending those carriers in the early 2040s.

[Captiva]

There was a bug that was preventing the invasion supposedly fixed in last patch. I restarted my last game because I went to past 2040 with no invasion.

So I started another new game I just spent last week playing because first was a dud, on my new game I set aliens to 1.5 aggression and they still did not invade to 2036 and only sent one single carrier and do not have anymore built anywhere that I can tell. They then stupidly landed their troops in China with a miltech of almost 6.

So the aliens got obliterated. They could have landed so many places and been fine, but they chose one of only a few countries that could easily wipe them out.

I get early access, but breaking something as important as the invasion is lame to say the least and cost me and others a ton of time we cant get back...

[Patrus]

As I understand it, the invasion is not a scripted event, at least not fully. Meaning, that the game doesn't have code like: "exactly in 2036 spawn 2 carriers and send them to Earth".

Aliens have to build those carriers using resources they've got and then they need to decide it's a good moment to send them. That depends on different circumstances. If aliens do well, they may send more carriers earlier. If they do badly, the invasion may get delayed and be weaker. So, if you got a weak invasion, it's just bad luck (or good luck).

[Captiva]

Bad luck is when it rains when you need to spend the afternoon outside.

Playing a game for almost 300 hours only to have it broken at crucial moments is something else entirely.

The fact that the aliens never decided to launch an invasion in my last game (150 hours wasted) and then in the second game waited until 2036 and then only sent 1 ship when the game is set on 1.5 times aggression is not just bad luck, it is almost game breaking.

Now I have the dilemma of should I just finish this dud of a current game and spend another 100 hours seeing if it pans out or restart to go through another 100 hours or so of grind only to maybe end right back up where I am again if stuff is still not working right...

As far as OP, you might want to consider restarting since the bug was probably the reason for the issue. You might still be okay though if you wait it out. Hard to tell.

I would check your alien fleet tab and see if they have any army carriers listed. If not, then your game might be a dud too.

[HiddenStar]

I'm currently in a game that's in around 2042 and the aliens haven't yet landed, but I thought it was because of the things I did. I basicaly rushed the Earth-to-Space defences and every time an alien compound started getting constructed I destroyed it. The aliens have had two major waves of aggression against me, both ending with them destroying a few less relevant space installations and getting a couple of their fleets wrecked by base defenses. I thought I had basicaly managed to scare them off of Earth. :D

I also feel like Humanity First has been, while not doing particularly well, drawn crazy amounts of alien aggro. Servants and Protectorate had at some point held China and now India. I spent a lot of time very vigorously tearing China to pieces with unrest missions, but for a long time Servants technicaly had crazy amounts of controlled control points...so... Maybe it's a bug, maybe it's something that happens when the aliens either get scared or decide their hands are full or if their servants are doing well by some metric. Personally, as much I have prepared for the invasion, I am very glad that it has not happened yet and I hope to kick the aliens off the solar system before they even get a chance to do it.

[Captiva]

Yeah, maybe you can scare them off. I am not sure. Here is the patch notes that have the fix in them for the invasion bug.

0.3.121

A
- fix crash when an AI fleet attempts a pursuit in a deep-space engagement when it lacks the DV to bid on the pursuit
- Attempt fix a crash when a dead or dismissed councilor is the target of detain/kill event effects

B
- Fix a serious AI error that was causing it to discard invade earth goals when an escort for the carrier was built before the carrier. This was causing slow or absent launches of assault carriers to Earth.
- Bugfix: If a fleet is in an involuntary transfer to a higher barycenter, and is being ordered to transfer to its current barycenter, the transfer planner didn't look far enough into the future for potential transfers and erroniously treated it as a single-barycenter transfer (which is only accurate in the short term). The specific bug involved a low acceleration fleet on a hyperbolic trajectory leaving Mercury's sphere of influence. It was trying to return to Mercury orbit, and couldn't, as we weren't checking transfers that start after it achieved solar orbit.
- fix issue with notification settings preventing alerts when newsfeed is turned off (#3947). This also fixes spam of enemy probes arriving at space bodies.
- will enforce the 1000 person minimum for a region in a second location (#3950)
- fix / remove responsibility to nation/faction being assigned in nuclear weapons events, which are explicitly covert or by a third party. This was causing unintended atrocities to be assigned.
- fix some AI logic bugs in founding bases on the moon and near the Sun.

C
- fix a bunch of bad grammar in event text
- fix some Russian breakaway names

[HiddenStar]

Originally posted by Captiva:

- Fix a serious AI error that was causing it to discard invade earth goals when an escort for the carrier was built before the carrier. This was causing slow or absent launches of assault carriers to Earth.

Assault Carriers are those really long ships, right? At some point IIIRC one of them was heading to Earth, and I braced for invasion, but nothing happened. I never found it in the solar system again. I suspect one of the AI factions managed to destroy it before it landed.

[Kunming]

I realised in the latest patch Resistance and HF are doing a much better job taking care of Aliens than bickering with the anti-alien factions. Im at 2030 (exodus game, playing in the shadows for now) and aliens still havent sent a proper fleet, then I saw the resistance has the whole belt colonised, while I focused on Mars only. There is probably fighting going on in the belt as the Resistance has dmged ships in the list.

[FENラック1312]

I'm at 2047 in a game I've been reloading a lot of saves on and no alien armies have been deployed. They've sent multiple large fleets to Earth that kind of just, didn't do anything and then left? I don't know how to identify which ships are actually carriers.

[Patrus]

Carriers are alien ships that have class "Assault carrier". You can see in "Fleets" tab if aliens have any and where they are now.
When they start moving towards Earth, you get a special warning in a window (I don't know if always or only the first time).

[FENラック1312]

Originally posted by Patrus:

Carriers are alien ships that have class "Assault carrier". You can see in "Fleets" tab if aliens have any and where they are now.
When they start moving towards Earth, you get a special warning in a window (I don't know if always or only the first time).

I went through the whole fleets list and didn't see any like that. I also don't remember getting warnings for fleets starting to move towards Earth, just arrival notifications.

[Patrus]

Well, then either aliens never built them or they were destroyed in combat with you or some other faction.

In my current game as Resistance, I've got a warning in 2036 that said something like: "Aliens are sending big ships that seem fit for atmospheric landing towards Earth. They may contain armies" and about 1.5 year later (after they arrived - they are pretty slow) 3 assault carriers landed on Earth and unloaded 3 armies with about 9 military technology each (9 armies in total).

I thought about stopping them, but they had big escort fleet that my missile monitors didn't have any chance against.

[FENラック1312]

Originally posted by Patrus:

Well, then either aliens never built them or they were destroyed in combat with you or some other faction.

In my current game as Resistance, I've got a warning in 2036 that said something like: "Aliens are sending big ships that seem fit for atmospheric landing towards Earth. They may contain armies" and about 1.5 year later (after they arrived - they are pretty slow) 3 assault carriers landed on Earth and unloaded 3 armies with about 9 military technology each (9 armies in total).

I thought about stopping them, but they had big escort fleet that my missile monitors didn't have any chance against.

I definitely never got that warning. The other factions never had much of a space presence, and I didn't really have much in space myself until the 2040s, and by that point I was already nearly maxed out on the threat meter.

The only theory I have, if it's not just been a bug, is that the aliens kept failing to destroy the International Space Station (defense structures can be really good), and maybe they didn't want to attack while there was an armed station in orbit?